Animal Books

Our Animal Books section covers everything from pocket field guides to memoirs written by naturalists who spent a lifetime watching a single species. Given our location at the entrance to Banff National Park, this is one of our most naturally stocked categories: customers come in after a day on the trail having spotted a bear, an elk, or a mountain goat, and leave with a guide that helps them understand what they saw.

The shelf ranges widely beyond the local mountains. You will find domestic animal care guides, veterinary reference texts, breed histories for dog and horse enthusiasts, and illustrated children’s animal books sitting alongside serious academic work on animal behaviour, ecology, and conservation.

Because so much of this section is sourced from naturalists’ personal libraries, it is a good place to find older field guides with a previous owner’s own notes and sightings pencilled into the margins. Many collectors consider that part of a book’s charm rather than a flaw, and some of these copies record sightings from a version of the Bow Valley that has since changed considerably.

We also stock a rotating selection of marine life, bird, and insect guides, along with specialist titles on animal tracking and wilderness safety that pair naturally with our climbing and scrambling material for anyone planning extended time in bear or cougar country.

Seasonal demand shapes this shelf noticeably. Spring and early summer bring a steady stream of visitors asking for bear safety and wildlife identification guides before a first backcountry trip, while winter tends to bring readers browsing quietly for a good animal memoir to read by the fire. We try to keep both moods well stocked.

Older regional guides are worth particular attention here. Ranges shift, taxonomies get revised, and a guide written specifically for the eastern slopes of the Rockies is often far more useful on a local trail than a broader North American volume printed more recently.

• Field guides and identification handbooks
• Regional guides to Rocky Mountain wildlife
• Wildlife photography and natural history
• Pet care, breed histories, and veterinary reference
• Animal behaviour, ecology, and conservation studies
• Illustrated children’s animal books
• Tracking and wilderness safety guides
• Bird, insect, and marine life references

Readers browse this shelf both before a trip, to know what they might encounter, and after one, to identify what they already saw. Because field guides go out of print as taxonomies and ranges are revised, an older edition can still be the clearest and most complete reference for a specific region like the Bow Valley, even after a newer edition has replaced it on general bookstore shelves.

We have also noticed that many customers end up buying two copies of the same guide, one to keep at home and a second, more compact edition to carry in a daypack. That is worth keeping in mind if you find a title you like in more than one printing, since the smaller edition often disappears from the shelf first.

Field guides are working books, and most of the copies that reach us have been in a pack or a glovebox at some point. We describe scuffing, water marks, and annotation plainly, because a guide that has clearly been used is not the same object as a shelf copy, even when both are readable.

Illustrated natural history and wildlife photography books are graded more strictly, since plate quality and dust jacket condition matter considerably more to collectors of those titles.